


golden state: or a primer on moving to los angeles, california

by theoriginofloves (madelinedrive)



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: But what if he lived??, Coping, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Nightmare talk, Surgery Mention, Trauma, i'm bad at tags y'all, scar talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 14:21:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20931659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madelinedrive/pseuds/theoriginofloves
Summary: Some things you wished you’d known before you moved to California...(Vignettes from Eddie's perspective about surviving, moving across the country, trauma, healing and being in love)





	golden state: or a primer on moving to los angeles, california

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I wrote this in a couple days and in a different style than I've ever really written before. I truly wrote most of these pieces because I don't have the capability to draw fanart of them. Once again, editing is my enemy, so sorry in advance! Best read while listening to Norman Fucking Rockwell. Hope you like it!

**Some things you wished you’d known before you moved to California: **

**Your boyfriend’s house is huge. Unbearably so.**

When people do well for themselves in New York, they buy penthouses or brownstones, lots of square footage tucked neatly into condensed little buildings. Even the nice houses in the nearby suburbs, like the one you’d been living in out on Long Island, were compact and unimposing. In Los Angeles, if you’re doing well, you buy a fucking mansion with more rooms than you could possibly need. 

"This house is stupid,” is your assessment after getting the full tour, seeing the five bedrooms and four bathrooms that seem to be going completely unused. “This is a stupid way to live.” 

“So you like it?” Richie teases, before adding, “I actually haven’t spent a lot of time here, I was mostly renting it out while I was on tour or living at my place in New York.” 

Because _of course_ he’d had a place in New York too. You’d stayed there for the first few weeks after being discharged from the hospital and while dealing with the preliminary stages of the divorce, while you talked Myra through the paperwork and waited for the clearance from your doctors to fly across the country. In truth, you would have preferred to stay in the apartment in New York — it was this surprisingly beautiful penthouse of an unassuming brownstone in the Village — but between finalizing the divorce and resigning from your job, you both agreed that it made sense to start fresh somewhere new. 

“I can tell,” you say as you walk again through the massive, nearly empty living room that looks out onto a pristine pool, carefully landscaped backyard, and view of the city. 

It’s an ugly city. 

He sneaks up behind you and wraps his arms around your body, his touch more gentle around your torso where the surgical staples were removed a couple weeks ago. You’ve told him it doesn’t hurt that much anymore, but he’s still careful. It feels strange to be treated with an abundance of tenderness. 

“Look, I’ll call the decorator tomorrow and we can really start over. We’ll get new furniture, turn one of the bedrooms into an office for you to do your consulting shit, really get settled in,” he rests his chin on your shoulder, his voice soft in your ear as he continues, “Just give it a few months and if you still hate it, we’ll sell the fucker and find a different place.” 

You agree and you kiss him for a long time before you take another lap of the house, this time pointing out all the notes you’ll have for the decorator. 

**The traffic is as bad as everyone says, the driving even worse. **

Los Angeles is sprawled out like a bloated monster, with unkempt freeways spilling out into ill-planned city streets. The potholes are a joke, they might as well be ditches dug in the middle of the street with the express purpose of destroying your shocks. Every neighborhood seems to have a distinctly incorrect way of navigating it, and every single driver thinks they’re so goddamn important that the rules of the road just don’t apply to them. 

The first time you drive around the city by yourself, a blonde man carelessly texting nearly side swipes your car and it takes every ounce of self-restraint for you to not pull up alongside and scream at him. As your boyfriend has pointed out several times, that’s just not the way things are done in LA. 

**The doctor’s offices will all be too new-age for comfort. **

Even though you expressed this concern to your GP back in New York, and to the specialist who had to write you a special referral to a colleague on the west coast, and to Richie twenty times the morning before your appointment, they all assured you that the doctor you’d be seeing was well-regarded and incredibly professional. 

And yet, when you check in with the receptionist, her outfit can only be described as athleisure wear and after you fill out a few forms and hand them back to her, she definitely says ‘namaste’ to you before asking you to wait for your name to be called. 

So your face is already hot and your skin already crawling when the doctor calls you back into an exam room, and when you realize that there’s spa music being piped into the room from some invisible speaker, you almost get up and walk right back out. 

The doctor turns out to be incredibly kind, even more attentive than the surgeon and specialist who had sewn your guts back inside of your body as best as they could, and she asks informed and knowledgeable questions about your medical history that show that she has already put in the work to familiarize herself with your unique past. 

But after she’s detailed an action plan for recovery over the next few months, which includes minor physical therapy and biweekly phone call checkups, she also gives you a referral for a psychologist and recommends that you keep a journal to track not only your physical health over the healing period, but your emotional and mental health as well. 

The thought of doing so makes you want to puke. 

The cherry on top of it all is that on the way out, while confirming the physical therapy appointment dates and times with the receptionist, she looks up at your face for a long moment before saying, “You know, if you ever want to talk to a plastic surgeon about that scar, I’ve got a guy that could clear it up like that.” 

She snaps her fingers to illustrate the ease at which you could fix the deformity on your face, the one you didn’t realize needed fixing so badly.

When you get home, Richie isn’t back yet from whatever meeting he has that afternoon, so you spend an hour staring at your cheek in the mirror. You trace the length of the scar, feel the texture of its ridges on the pad of your fingertip. You remember the feeling of cold steel piercing your skin, the feeling of having to remove the knife yourself and stab another man with it. It occurs to you that with all that has happened over the last couple months, with having your body ripped open and pieced back together, your life upended in every way imaginable, you’d been too distracted by trying to stay alive to realize that your face had been mutilated too. 

You’d never really been concerned with your looks before, had always known on some level you were good-looking _enough_, but now you’ve got twin ugly scars snarling up your back and torso, plus the one you can’t hide because it’s pressed on your cheek like a kiss. 

For the first time in your life, you feel ugly. 

Then your boyfriend is home and before you can even begin orchestrating a lie about how the appointment went, he kisses your lips and then the scar on your cheek. 

You hadn’t even noticed until then that this is how he’s kissed you every time he leaves on an errand and whenever he returns. It’s become so second nature that neither of you has even noticed he’s been doing it. 

“How was the doctor? Did she give you the all clear to fuck?” he chirps, his hand resting at the center of your back. Through the thin fabric of your shirt, the scar on your back is pressed against the length of his palm. “What, why are you looking at me like that?”

Your disappointed frown has turned into a twisted smirk and you laugh as you find yourself saying, “You want to hear something fucked up?”

“Always,” Richie replies eagerly.

“Well the doctor said everything’s going great, but the _receptionist_ said I should get plastic surgery to get rid of my scar,” you laugh, turning your scarred cheek to him as you add, “Isn’t that funny?” 

Instead of laughing along like you thought he might do, Richie brings both of his hands to your face, holding your gaze firmly in his as he shakes his head, “Fuck that. Fuck that and fuck her.”

“_Rich—_”

“No, don’t ‘_Rich_’ me,” he dismisses your attempt to steer away from sincerity. “You know what I see every time I look at one of your scars? How you fucking _survived_ the impossible and still manage to be unbearably hot, Eds. Every part of you is fucking sexy, and nothing some stuck up idiot says is gonna change that.”

You and your boyfriend finally fuck for the first time that afternoon, even though you can’t really remember if the doctor said it was okay for you to do so yet.

**Disneyland is nowhere near LA, no matter what your boyfriend says. **

It’s actually pretty fucking far away. 

And you make sure to repeat that to him every half hour that you spend crawling through traffic to get there. 

The pure, unbridled joy on his face as he drags you around the amusement park sort of makes up for it, but you don’t dare tell him that. 

**The beach, however, is really not that far away. **

The first time you go to one of the LA beaches is one one of those unreasonably warm days in September, one of those days that in your bones you know should be a chilly, fall day but is actually a stupidly perfect southern California day. 

And you don’t even like the beach that much, you never have, but you like sitting under a comically large beach umbrella with the New York Times crossword folded in your lap while you watch Richie flopping around in the water with a bunch of teenagers on boogie boards. 

You don’t dare to take off your shirt, but you slip off your shoes and press your toes into the warm sand and you feel content. 

**Paparazzi _are_ as bad as you think. **

This doesn’t feel like a universal problem for everyone that moves to California — just an inconvenient one you must reckon with when your boyfriend happens to be a celebrity. 

The first couple of times you try to shield your face with your jacket or your hand, always calling out swear words to the assholes shouting stupid, usually demeaning questions at you while you’re just trying to go to the grocery store or out to a restaurant. 

When you get a winking emoji text from Bev with a picture from People Magazine of you and Richie arguing in the Garden Center of a Lowe’s, you go on a screaming rant for five minutes straight about how you’re going to have to break up with him because you can’t live without privacy. 

It isn’t until this occurrence that Richie thinks to point out, “You know if you just flip them off, they can’t sell any of the pictures, right?” 

“How would I know that?” you huff at him. 

He just shrugs. 

The next time you’re out on your way to lunch with the decorator, and a fleet of paparazzi materialize out of nowhere, you stick one of your hands out in front of your face and your other hand in front of Richie’s, both with middle fingers flipped up. The cameramen groan and boo in response, their cameras still clicking rapidly as they follow you up the street, but the more you do it, the less they show up to bother the two of you. 

A candid picture of you never shows up in the gossip magazines again. 

**And people will come up to your boyfriend in the street and just start crying. **

It’s usually teenagers, but not always, and it usually starts with crying, but not always. 

Once you and Richie worked out your feelings for each other during your time in the hospital, and decided you wouldn’t be able to live without each other, the two of you talked a lot about what he would do about his public image. It was impossible for people _not_ to find out, given his baffling popularity, but would you two just try to lay low as long as you could? Would he issue a statement through a publicist and then never comment on it again? Those were your suggestions, though they didn’t sit right with him. 

You work through a couple ideas but nothing seems to fit what he’s looking for. Then one day, as the two of you are just laying in bed in his apartment in New York, and you’re telling him about a story you read in the Times the day before about the possibility of new tariffs being implemented and their effects on foreign markets, he jumps out of bed and runs out of the room. He calls something over his shoulder, but you can’t make it out. 

Two hours later, he returns to bed with his laptop, sets it down in front of you, and presses play. 

It’s a fifteen minute video of him sitting on the rooftop of the building, sometimes addressing the webcam of his laptop, sometimes addressing the sky in the distance. He starts with a story about Derry, a half-fabricated account of going home for a summer reunion with old friends and realizing that he hasn’t been facing his fears. He talks about knowing he was gay for a long time, but also not _really_ knowing. He talks about realizing he’s been in love with one of his friends from childhood and not knowing it until seeing his face at dinner for the first time in over 25 years. He talks, vaguely, about an accident occurring that nearly killed him and all of his friends, and how it made him realize life is too short to not live fully. So he’s coming out, and he’ll be talking about it more in his future material and appearances, but for now he just wants to say he’s gay, he’s in love, and he’s really, _stupidly_ happy. It hasn’t been an easy path and there’s a lot to still work through going forward, so he’s taking a couple months off from working, but he just wanted everyone to know, and he’ll share new tour dates, material, et cetera when he has it. 

You watch the video three times while he watches you. The first time you’re just watching his facial expressions, the way his eyes shift and change at certain parts, parts where you know the story is much more complicated than either of you can ever share with the public. The second time, you’re listening for any variations on the story you’ve relayed to Myra over and over again, trying not to dwell on the painful few conversations you had with her in the hospital and then at arbitrations with your lawyers. The third time you’re processing that this isn’t just his coming out, but yours too. He doesn’t use your name in the video, but eventually everyone will know it’s you, and that’s a scary fucking feeling. 

“So?” he asks after you finish it the third time. 

You stare at his face frozen on the screen, then at his face in real life, his teeth chewing at his lip nervously. “Are you scared?” 

“Fucking terrified,” he nods, breathing out a laugh as he adds, “But also, no. After this summer, after everything…I don’t think I can ever be _that_ scared again, you know?”

You nod, because he’s right. The fear that you’re feeling now is child’s play compared to the real terror you’ve survived. 

“I know. I think it’s great, Rich,” you say cautiously, handing the laptop back over to him, “But can you wait until Friday to post it? The lawyers finished worked everything out this week and Myra said she’d sign the papers and I just…you know.” 

You can see that Richie is trying to hold back a goofy grin — he’s been very supportive and reserved about his feelings throughout the process of filing the divorce, but now that it’s so close to being finalized he’s getting more outwardly celebratory. “Of course, Eds,” he shuts the laptop and sets it aside, “Your wish is my command, darlin’.” 

“Then my real wish is that you never fucking call me _darlin’_ again,” you huff, biting back your own grin as Richie falls back against the bed laughing. 

The video goes up the Monday after the divorce is finalized — because Richie says he wants to spend the weekend celebrating, which involves a lot of the two of you eating crappy junk food and takeout, playing video games, and testing the boundaries of sexual activity allowed by your doctors. 

That morning, you watch him press ‘Upload’ on the video, you mindlessly clutch at his arm as he posts the link to the video on all of his official social media accounts. When all is said and done, and the statement is posted everywhere, he shuts his laptop and the two of you make out for ten minutes before the notifications on his phone become impossible to ignore. 

In the hours that follow, he has to field a hundred calls from a hundred different people. His agent and publicist practically storm the front door of his apartment that night, both taking turns at ripping him apart for going rogue with such a big announcement. He cheekily tries to introduce you to them, which only leads to you also having to sit and listen to them lecture about _optics_ and _capitalizing on momentum_. 

The three of them argue about stupid bullshit for hours, and resolution only comes when Richie finally agrees to go on one — only _one_ — late night show for an interview. You don’t go to the taping that week because your immune system still isn’t strong enough to spend that much time out in public, but you help him pick out what he’s going to wear and you kiss him hard before he goes. 

When you watch the show together later, his head resting in your lap and your hand stroking his hair, you smile when the host compliments his bravery, and Richie responds by launching into a bit about how you’re the brave one, how the only thing you’re really worried about in regards to coming out is that people will find out how much funnier you are than him. 

All that to say that one Sunday morning, as you dutifully drag Richie from stall to stall at the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market, a younger man accidentally bumps into your arm and when he turns to apologize, he drops the tomatoes he’d been cradling and begins to sob. Before you can even ascertain what’s going on, he launches into a light-speed monologue that sounds like _oh my God you’re Richie Tozier oh my God I’m such a huge fan I can’t believe this your coming out video helped me come out to my parents and seeing you as an out, gay comedian has really inspired me personally and creatively I just want to say thank you thank you for everything oh my God I can’t believe this._

The fervor in his words draws attention from others, which makes you feel a little claustrophobic, but Richie handles it surprisingly well, shaking the kid’s hand before offering to take a selfie with him. As they take a picture together and Richie gives him a hug, you slip the stall’s owner a few bills to cover the produce the kid dropped, plus anything else he was going to buy once you two left. 

On the way home, Richie is mindlessly rifling through the canvas bags full of groceries on his lap in the passenger seat as he says, “That was kind of weird, right?” 

“The thing with the kid?” 

“Yeah,” he nods, dissatisfied with everything in the bag as he places it back at his feet. “People have come up to me and done the fan freakout thing, but no one’s ever cried before. Or thanked me and _meant_ it.” 

You nod out at the road, one hand on the steering wheel and the other held out for him. When he takes it, he squeezes it and you smile. “It was really sweet,” you glance over at him, before shaking your head, “But god, what a fucked up world it is when kids are looking up to _you_ of all people.”

“Asshole!” Richie laughs, leaning over and peppering your cheek with kisses even as you yell at him, “Not while I’m driving, dickhead!”

**It isn’t all glamorous. **

Even on the nights where it seems like it should be, the nights where you’re rubbing elbows with _real_ celebrities at Hollywood parties where you don’t belong. 

You try to be a good sport about these sorts of things, because you love Richie and you love being around him as much as humanly possible, especially given all the time you’ve lost. But when it comes down to spending time with him amongst the throngs of people you don’t know and can’t relate to, it becomes more complicated. 

On this night in particular, you tried to tell Richie that you weren’t feeling very well and that you really should stay home, but it’s a charity thing and it’s hosted by a comedian he really admires and it would mean the world to him if you came to this one and if you did, you could skip the next three events that he had to go to. And Richie never pushes you to do something you don’t want to do, so you know this one is really important to him. 

So you put on a brave face, you put on suit, and you get in the car that someone has sent over for the two of you. And as he rants and raves the whole ride over about how he’s finally going to meet _this_ person and he’s excited to introduce you to _that_ person, you just try to keep your head from swimming.

This event, like all the others, is at some unbelievably gorgeous venue, an art-deco building preserved by the historical society for its beauty and stature. You cling to Richie’s hand for dear life as you’re escorted from one magnificent room to the next, being introduced to beautiful people whose names you instantly forget because your head is throbbing and your stomach is beginning to ripple with pain. 

An hour into the night, just before dinner is about to be served, you try to excuse yourself to find a bathroom but the second you let go of Richie’s hand your balance is thrown and you stutter-step back into his arms. 

“Eds, are you okay?” you hear him ask through a fog. 

“ ‘m fine,” you try to say back, but it doesn’t come out right. 

He puts his palm to your forehead. “Fuck,” he says, pressing the back of his hand to the skin under your ear and saying louder, “Fuck, Eddie, you’re burning up.”

You try to say no, you aren’t, but you shut your eyes and then you can’t say anything at all. 

When you can open your eyes again, you’re in a hospital bed again and you let out an involuntary yelp, your hands going to your stomach expecting the gruesome pain of the staples freshly placed post-surgery. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Richie is at your side in an instant, taking your hands and moving them away from your stomach. “You’re okay, babe.”

“What happened?” you ask, noticing that he’s still wearing his suit, though his tie has been removed and is draped over the back of a nearby chair. 

“You were at the onset of an infection,” Richie dropped into the chair, holding your hands as he added, “You spiked a wicked fever and that, combined with dehydration, made you pass out.” He goes quiet for a moment, looking at your hands and saying quietly, “I’m so fucking sorry, Eds. I should’ve listened to you when you said you didn’t feel good, I shouldn’t have made you go with me.” 

You close your eyes and think about the night, open them again and shake your head. “No, I’m sorry,” you huff, embarrassed at the fact that you had probably embarrassed Richie at this important event. “I know how important this thing was to you and I—”

“Nothing is more important to me than you, Eddie,” he says, shaking his head and saying, “Your health, you being healthy and happy, it’s the only thing that matters to me.” When he looks up again, his eyes are red and puffy, “I can’t lose you again.” 

You reach out to thread your fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him close and kissing him hard, the way that presses his glasses awkwardly against your face. 

**Or easy.**

You don’t have nightmares because you don’t have dreams. You joke that your brain went through so much trauma that now when you go to sleep, it just checks out completely. 

But Richie has nightmares. Bad ones. 

Sometimes you wake up and he’s out of bed. You can hear him pacing around a nearby room or smoking a joint out on the patio. You’ll call out to him and eventually he’ll crawl back into bed, burrowing into your arms. You’ll ask if he wants to talk about it and the answer is usually no. You hold him and kiss his hair until he drifts back to sleep. 

Sometimes he screams himself awake, jolting up and looking around wildly as you wake startled too. When he sees your face, his body will shake and tears will spill down his face as he murmurs, “I thought you were dead, I thought we couldn’t get you out in time, I thought Neibolt collapsed with your body still inside.” When this happens, you sit up and pull him into your side and tell him, “I’m here, I’m okay, everything’s okay.” 

Sometimes you’ll wake up in the middle of the night to find that he’s just been laying perfectly still, eyes wide and unable to sleep. When you reach out and touch his chest, he’ll kiss you hard and say the word _please_ so softly, and you’ll know what he needs — you’ll fuck him slowly and sweetly until he forgets what it felt like to be covered in your blood, to feel the weight of your dying body in his arms. 

Sometimes he sleeps through the night and then tries to smile in the morning, but his hands still shake until you hold them in yours.

**But you’ll be happier than you ever imagined it was possible for you to be.**

One day you come home and you hear his voice before you see him. 

“Welcome home babe, I did something stupid!”

The declaration is followed by two curt yapping noises, then Richie shushing loudly. 

“Oh God,” you exhale, hanging your bag and jacket by the front door before walking towards the sound of his voice. “Please tell me you didn’t get us—”

“I got us dogs!” he exclaims as you come face to face with your boyfriend holding out two Pomeranian puppies. One of them barks excitedly and the other just wags its tail, both of their little tongues hanging out of their mouths. 

“_Richie_,” you whine, stepping forward and scooping one from his hands. You stare into its face and remember the mind trick from the sewer, the way the dog that looked just like this one had transformed into a disgusting monster. The puppy tries to lick at your nose, whining softly because you aren’t holding it close enough to reach. “This is _so_ not funny.”

He cuddles the other one against his chest, the one that keeps letting out little barks as it paws at him. “It’s not supposed to be funny,” he pouts, though his smile betrays him as he adds, “Okay, it’s supposed to be a little funny. But remember Dr. Mary said it might be good for us to consider getting emotional support animals?”

You roll your eyes. The one time you expected Richie to have your back, when you’d complained about how your doctor wanted you to see a psychologist, he’d betrayed you by pointing out that the two of you had been through some pretty fucked up shit and it would probably be good for you both to be in therapy. Ever since, you’d both been going to individual counseling once a week and couples counseling every other week, and much to your chagrin, it has improved both of you lives tremendously. 

Before you can rebuttal, the one you’re holding snuggles against your chest, pressing it’s face against your collarbone and dozing off. When you look up, Richie’s eyes are doing that thing where they might as well turn to hearts and float right out of his head. 

“I hate you. What are their names?” 

“This one is Spaghetti,” he holds up the one in his hands, nodding his head at the one in your hands and saying, “That one’s Meatball.” 

“No,” you answer immediately, shaking your head as you stroke the dog’s impossibly soft fur, “I’m _not_ calling this dog _Meatball_.”

“I fucking swear to God I didn’t make those names up, they already had them. Look, watch,” he starts to laugh, bending down to sit his puppy down. He nods for you to do the same and you reluctantly place yours back down on its feet. 

“Spaghetti!”

The one dog barks, jumping on all fours and staring up at Richie intently. 

“Meatball!” 

The other dog, the one you had just been holding, does the same, letting out a careful bark and turning around to face Richie, its head tilting to listen intently. 

Richie laughs so hard he has to lay down on the floor, which prompts both of the small dogs to jump all over him, pressing their noses to his face and in his hair. 

And your heart is so full of love, you feel so _fucking_ lucky that this is your life now, that you have to get down on the floor too. You straddle your ridiculous boyfriend and gently hold the dogs back from his face so that you can look in his eyes when you say, “I love you so fucking much, you absolute idiot. Let’s get married.” 

And he just smiles with that goofy grin and says, “Okay, let’s get married.”

**Author's Note:**

> Every day I feel inspired by soooo many pieces of content on Twitter/Tumblr (text posts, gif sets, fan art, popular head canons, etc) because this is an inordinately talented fandom, and I'm just happy to be here, so thanks for reading y'all! Catch up with me on Tumblr at @theoriginofloves :)


End file.
